The Barker Street Regulars

away to the extent of comparing it to the gorgeous gray cat in the television commercial? I didn’t think so. But I just might have told someone at the Gateway about the big, handsome TV cat. A few of the people Rowdy and I visited preferred cats to dogs. I’d definitely discussed cats with Helen Musgrave, Althea’s roommate. Althea could have been listening. There was a television mounted high on a wall in Helen and Althea’s room. I constructed a little scenario. The TV is on. Ceci is visiting Althea. The cat-food ad appears. Catching sight of the beautiful gray cat, Ceci exclaims and gushes in characteristic fashion. Althea remarks that Holly, too, is enamored of the commercial’s captivating feline star. Improbable? Yes, but less improbable than what I wanted to view as the outright impossible—-mental telepathy.
    I just had to know. I’d never talked to Ceci on the phone before. The musical tone of her voice had escaped me. She sounded happy to hear from me and asked about Rowdy and Kimi. She seemed in no rush to find out why I was calling.
    I said, “I’ve had an odd experience.”
    “Oh,” she said merrily, “you’ve been to Irene Wheeler!”
    “Yes. I am really quite—”
    “Unnerved!” She made the sensation sound marvelous. “I was myself.”
    “What I’m wondering is...” I faltered. “Do you happen to have seen a cat-food commercial on TV? With a, uh, beautiful gray cat with big amber eyes.”
    “I usually watch Channel Two. Or Forty-four.” Those are our local PBS stations. “I am positively addicted to ’Wall Street Week in Review.’ If the truth be known, I have a mad crush on Louis Rukeyser! Oh, and the evening news, but most of the commercials are for, well, not at all what I care to contemplate anywhere near dinnertime and, really, not the sort of thing that has any place in a public forum, and, well, by comparison, cat food would be appetizing. So if the commercial was on, I might not have been watching, although a dog might have been another matter—that would certainly have caught my eye!—because, as you know, I am essentially a dog person—it’s a matter of the solar plexus—-not that I have anything against cats, naturally, or anyone or anything else, for that matter, except this cold-blooded murderer whom Jonathan attempted to apprehend during the course of what would otherwise have been an armed robbery, and I find it very difficult to forgive myself for the unkind thoughts I had about poor Jonathan before I knew, although all is now forgiven, of course. And Jonathan is extremely sorry for the terrible things he said to Irene. Like most of the world, he simply did not understand.”
    Ceci’s nonstop delivery had the odd effect of making me hold my breath until she paused, as she did not do until she’d finished. Her lungs, I reflected, must be extraordinary. Could she have had operatic training? Recovering from my anoxia, I asked, “A robbery?”
    “Oh, yes. Althea didn’t tell you?”
    “No.”
    “Well, an attempted robbery it was. Both Irene and Jonathan have made that crystal clear. Objects, you see, speak to the gifted just as our seemingly mute creatures do, and the supposedly inanimate beings with whom we share the cosmos forget nothing, because, you see, time is meaningless to them, all is eternal, past is present is future, and it occurs to me that it must be terribly frustrating for them, poor things, to have so much to say and so few beings eager to listen, unless, of course, do they converse among themselves? I must ask Irene. In any case, after I retired, Jonathan heard a noise outdoors, you see, a sort of scraping sound, exactly the sort of sound a burglar might make, by mistake, naturally, not on purpose, and so Jonathan decided to investigate, because when all our neighbors installed these noisy alarm systems, well, Ellis said that a big dog was the best deterrent on earth, besides which pets, you know, are forever accidentally triggering those alarms, and then the police come, and it’s really such a great nuisance that most people end up leaving the alarms turned off and... Where was I? Oh, yes, so Jonathan, surreptitiously, you see, went and got his parka and crept out through one of the French doors to investigate and sprinted after the burglar and finally nabbed him right by the sundial, where he did his best to subdue the man, but tripped, and was himself subdued.” Sounding pleased with her turn of phrase, she added, “From a